Ahem,
June began dank and damp, with a succession of rainy days that sapped the spirit. However, I enjoyed trying to hawk our unwanted knick-knacks to the rest of the street at an indoor boot sale organised by neighbours in memory of our mutual friend and friendly neighbour Denny, who passed away a few weeks ago. Alli’s home-made chutneys flew off the trestle table, but her paperbacks were firmly grounded. I sold some costume jewellery bequeathed to us somewhen from the Luxembourg Mileses. I also spent a few days dog-sitting Maisie in Ella and Sam’s spacious new house in Burgess Hill.
Gwen took a holiday in La Hune with her friends for a few days, then came back to see Olivia Dean in London. On the next night she went with me to see Elvis Costello and the Imposters at the Dome in Brighton. I last saw him forty years ago in Brussels when he was 31. He was a lot better then. Disappointingly, his voice was rarely in tune, and it became increasingly difficult to listen to it or to appreciate his great tunes. I thought I was the only one in the admiring Dome audience who realised it but then saw from later reviews that I was not alone. And referencing Bob Dylan is no defence. Bowie noticed that he had “a voice like sand and glue” in 1972, and even Dylan’s older raspy voice is always in tune.
Alli has spent several whole days working in the garden of Ella and Sam’s new house, becoming a much appreciated, de facto head gardener and pressure-sprayer of its large drive and generous terrace. Shortly after several days of intensive work in our small own small garden, she spent over a week with Kay in Burgess Hill when Nick went away on holiday, although I doubt whether her green fingers reached much further than the terrace, now bedecked with new plants following a plundering of the previous plants by rampaging deer.
I have been trying my best to understand how to make short videos for Facebook and Instagram, but finding it a lot more complicated than I had first thought. This is all in the aid of a new venture I am developing: an online course in creative writing. It’s an old idea with years of dust shaken off it. I have previously given free creative writing lessons in Paris, Basel, Brussels and Abidjan, but never in the UK. The course will be called “Get Righting!” and I will be launching it on an unsuspecting world in the next few weeks. I also aim to start an offline course in Uckfield. A cunning plan, but rather slow in the hatch…
At the end of the month, Jessie and Jurrat arrived in La Hune for a proper stay of at least ten days with some of their friends. It looked as if it was going to be reassuringly hot for the rest of their visit. They followed my cousins Richard and Madeleine who came for two weeks that seemed to include very hot weather. It was certainly a hot day when I had lunch with my old friend Alex in Haywards Heath while he was on a brief stopover from France in England to visit family and friends. Alex is the only person I know who shares my views about life and the universe. Conversation is easy. We walked around the Ardingly reservoir afterwards which I thought looked unexpectedly full, given the ever-present threat of hosepipe bans in Sussex. Talking of utilities, we have had a new gas meter installed by the excellent Octopus company, who have also given us a handy reckoner of our gas and electricity consumption on a mobile device. The bad old days of knocking my head in the dark while reading the meter are over. Which reminds me. I really, truly don’t want Britain to be great again. Or anything again.
The heat wave and the early stages of the Football World Cup have been appropriate companions, especially since I have again spent much of the month on my own. I was able at leisure to watch a mixture of World Cup, arthouse films, and edgy series (Tiptoe is worth a watch). I also pottered around the house trying to mend things and to follow Alli’s highly complicated requirements for watering and spray-misting the interior and exterior plants.
This month I got ahead with my series of articles about Uckfield’s local entrepreneurs by interviewing three of them in quick succession: the family owners of the Highlands Inn, the owner of the Oast Farm Shop in Buxted, and the owner of PP Estates, a successful garden machinery company on the industrial park. Gwen had a rave probation review in her new job at Mayhew. She has again resorted to sending us cute pictures of dogs needing adoption, which exacts unfair influence on us all. Jessie and Jurrat invited Alli and me with Ella and Sam for a convivial Father’s Day dinner in Brighton, which featured mostly local fresh fish, and was utterly delicious. Ella mentioned that she had given Sam his first Father’s Day card on behalf of the Bump.
June ended dry and dusty.
Yours in the family way,
Lionel